Things we find irritating in the outside world

[Reed John]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

That's the sort of come-back my wife makes when she's in one of her looking-for-a-ruck moods.

I don't say things like that to cause a ruck but to imagine strange possibilities that would make the world more interesing.

[WOM]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

That's the sort of thing my wife bellows as I'm heading down the basement stairs.

[David Agnew]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

Lyra wrote:

They have that at the bus stops at London Bridge. It's been a while since I've got on a bus there at rush hour so I don't know if they work or not.

Ha, of course they don't. Unless there's been a seizmic shift in the last few weeks.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

Lyra, never, ever go to a beach in Italy, that's what boys,men and old men do over there...Swimming is for mad German tourists.

1) Portuguese people who say to me, when it's cold and rainy: "You must be used to this." (me being English, like). No ... I've been out of the country for 25 years ... but I smile diplomatically as if it's the first time I've heard it (haven't lost my English reserve).

That's what I get each time I'm in Geneva and it rains..."Hey English, it's raining, bet you feel at home?"...Not that I'm English and that it never rains in Gva he lads...?

[Guest]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

Today's swimming nuisance was a bunch of kids. Jumping in, shrieking, blocking the bastard lanes.

[Bored Of Education]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

QUOTE:
Actually, I find irritating all language-related pedantry outside of the schoolhouse.

And here was me thinking you were fitting in so well with otf so far...

I am with him actually. Lynne fucking Truss doesn't know what she started.

I try to punctuate as well as I possibly can but do tend to write as I speak i.e. in a longwinded and digressive way with long sentences and paragraphs.

I do, however, feel that pointing out a person's bad punctuation can sometimes be a low way to make them feel intellectually inferior when the thrust of their argument is still sound.

A sort of written version of all those "eating peas with the back of your fork" table manners bullshit.

Actually, bullshit "manners" is something I find very irritating and condescending. The height of bad manners is making someone else feel uncomfortable and inferior

[WOM]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

Meh. The insure/ensure thing still bugs me. Just because words 'sound similar' doesn't give you an excuse to use them interchangeably.

[Reed John]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

I would generally agree, but the advent of email and message boards seems to have led to a plague of this sort of thing. People feel like they have to write fast in order to get their comment in before the discussion goes off in another direction. Writing fast without editing often leads to those sorts of homonym errors - like there/their/they're, your/you're, etc.

[WOM]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

That's the sort of thing my wife...

[Anton Gramscescu]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

What? What?

Don't leave us in suspense.

[erwin]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

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Writing fast without editing often leads to those sorts of homonym errors - like there/their/they're, your/you're, etc.

Do you mean 'homophone', Reed?

In fact in almost all cases, these 'errors' don't lead to any mis-communication because the context is all. In the not-so-distant future, the examples you gave will all be spelt the same (helped, yes, by the SMS/MSN generation). But why not? Chaucer's English is much further from ours than ours will be from the new English. It's just change.

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[WOM]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

Do you mean 'homophone', Reed?

Yeah, yeah. We knew what he meant. Context, you know.

/smiley.

But while I agree with you in principle, I disagree when it's a case of sloppiness or just plain illiteracy. Insure/ensure and then/than are two different words with two different meanings. It's not a case of stodgy word cops saying language shouldn't evolve and colour should never, ever have lost its 'u'.

[erwin]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

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I agree with you in principle, WornOld, but I disagree when it's a case of, possibly anarchic, but no less valid, efficiency. Why have two spellings of a homophone when the context tells you the meaning you want? By extension, my Mum, a Londoner, says "he don't". It's unconscious streamlining, rather than laziness.

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[Bored Of Education]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

Meh. The insure/ensure thing still bugs me. Just because words 'sound similar' doesn't give you an excuse to use them interchangeably.

Firstly, if you are a stickler for language, why are you using "Meh", a word that no-one ever uses in real life and is exclusively used on internet forums

Secondly, I tend to agree with you on the insure/ensure thing at it is something that can be pointed out reasonable and politely enough.

I, for example, hate people saying "Life insurance" when it is "Life assurance" but try to point it out politely

[Bored Of Education]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

Sorry, WoM, I wasn't pointing the finger at you particularly and now it looks like I am somewhat

Yeah, yeah. We knew what he meant. Context, you know.

/smiley.

But while I agree with you in principle, I disagree when it's a case of sloppiness or just plain illiteracy.

What if people are a bit illiterate though or, perhaps more realistically, if they are dyslexic?

I have been on other boards where people have been mocked for their spelling and then had to come out and explain they are dyslexic.

OK, in e-mails there are spell-checks but not on these type of forums (Are there?)

I also find "netiquette" pedantry nerds who complain when people use capitals all the time because "It is shouting". No, it's not, you idiot, it's capital letters

[erwin]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

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Who says we should all spell things in the same way? What authority? We all pronounce things in different ways, and (nowadays at least) that doesn't appear to be a problem. And we have dialects and idiolects.

Wai shood gramaticall and orthergrafical corectnes be importent if u can undestand my messidge?

Why this purity?

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[WOM]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

By extension, my Mum, a Londoner, says "he don't". It's unconscious streamlining, rather than laziness.

You had me up to there. I don't think your mum's thing is 'by extension' at all. "He don't" is a variant of "he doesn't" with the same root contraction. Insure/ensure and then/than are two different words. True homophones. My dad has the old-guy Canuck tendency to say "he come over last night" instead of "came over". Same root word, just sloppy tense.

I don't have a problem with 'meh', either. I'd only ever use it online (like BoTD says), where a shrug isn't really possible.

I get the 'netiquette' bitch about all-caps. In a one-dimensional medium, ground rules have been fairly well established for the sake of clear communications. All-caps is shouting. If you decide 'well, it may be shouting when others do it but it's just typing in all-caps when I do it', then you sort of have to be prepared to have it pointed out to you.

Spell check on forums? (Fora?) Wouldn't that be lovely. But no one would use it. 'ceptin' fer me.

[WOM]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

Why this purity?

Because societies tend to function better when we all abide by the same set of agreed-upon rules and practises. Within a given country or group of countries, we use the same set of numbers, the same currency, the same time system. And generally speaking, the same spelling of words. The written word is different from the spoken word, as it doesn't have the benefit of certain dimensions and nuances that exist in speech and face to face communication.

[Reed John]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

Yes, homophone. I haven't used either word since the first grade.

[JtS]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

I think homophonia is disgraceful in this day and age.

[Guest]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

I tend to get all upset when people use words to mean something they don't mean.
I recognise that one day, by sheer force of usage, 'enormity' will come to only mean 'largeness' and dictionaries will have to list 'outrageous' and 'wicked' as archaic meanings. But at the moment it annoys me. Similarly it'll be a sad day when 'deconstruction' is finally nothing more than a synonym for 'analysis' but I suppose it's inevitable.

Question is do we hurry these changes up to minimise the grief or do we upset ourselves engaging in futile resistance for the momentary satisfaction, especially where active misunderstandings are happening?

[Bored Of Education]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

Wai shood gramaticall and orthergrafical corectnes be importent if u can undestand my messidge?

See, the problem with that is that it takes twice as long to read and understand. Indeed, there is a large margin of error for misunderstanding that. Similar with text speak

Having said that, that is not how a dyslexic would write and someone that illiterate probably wouldn't get past the login function of any board

[Guest]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

Maybe we'll all end up speaking Lolcat.

kitteh say O noes! comprehenshun incompleet

[erwin]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

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See, the problem with that is that it takes twice as long to read and understand.

Only because you are used to a strict language system and your brain is not prepared to decipher it quickly. If I used shorthand, you might have a similar problem, but with familiarity over time would come ease.

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[Guest]

Things we find irritating in the outside world

What?? Are you saying that if one person chooses to ignore rules that everyone else understands, it's their fault if they find that difficult?